An Austrian art gallery has sold a painting by Egon Schiele for a record amount in order to fund a compensation payout to the owners of another of the artist's works which was looted by the Nazis in the 1930s.

The painting Houses with colorful laundry (Suburb II), completed in 1914, fetched almost £25 million at a Sotheby's sale this week. The buyer was not named.

Hillary Clinton has condemned the pro-Palestinian activists who plan on sailing a flotilla to Gaza as unhelpful and provocative.

The US Secretary of State said the plans, which would see a flotilla departing later this month with the intention of breaching Israel's sea blockade of Gaza, would only serve to increase tensions in the region.

Professor Lisa Jackson Pulver is not your average Australian Jew. True, she is one of this country's 110,000 or so tribal members, but she is also a member of another tribe - an Aboriginal tribe called the Wiradjuri.

And yet, despite the seeming rarity of an Aboriginal Jew, Professor Jackson Pulver says she is not alone.

Iranian-born Sorour Arbabzadeh is serving a nine-year sentence for her participation in the brutal killing of Ilan Halimi in 2006 - but she is again in the headlines for having seduced two of her prison wardens.

While the vast majority of Jews in Eastern Europe are concerned about antisemitism, it plays a minor role in the formation of their identity, according to a wide-ranging survey commissioned by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC).

An arson attack that left a man with severe burns has brought unwelcome scrutiny to a New York enclave of a strict Chasidic sect.

New Square - about 40 miles from New York City in Rockland County - is populated by Skver Chasidim, a group that originated in the Ukranian town of Skvyra. David Twersky has been its Grand Rabbi since his father died in 1968.